The Legend of Zelda: Forgotten Gates

Interesting that this topic should come up now. I was pondering some very closely related stuff for my game project's monthly blog post. I guess I'll talk about it here, might make a good concrete case study for all of us.

The project I'm referring to is The Legend of Zelda: Forgotten Gates. It has a combat system similar to Final Fantasy 6, and from the start I've assumed it would take the "default" route of traditional XP. Lately, though, I've been wondering whether this game really needs XP and leveling up at all, at least in the most familiar sense. I was planning to have a New Game+ of sorts, with the heroes reaching approximately level 30 by the end of the first run, maxing out at level 50 (or getting pretty close to it) by the end of the second run, and in the third run (or any subsequent ones) the heroes would be at full power, with the strength of their opposition designed to match through each run. But if that third run is the ideal gameplay, why bother with leveling up at all?

Well, there are a few reasons still, of course. The gratification of watching your avatars get stronger has already been mentioned in this thread, although one could say we're looking for alternative methods of controlling that growth. There's also the learning curve to consider, meaning the actual learning of the player about the intricacies of the game. If I give the player access to every skill of every hero right from the beginning, the player might be a bit overwhelmed by the options. They could also think, "What am I ever going to need this powerful but expensive blast spell for, the baddies go down easily enough with regular whacks," and then late in the game when that spell would actually be useful they're too ingrained with what's worked so far to even remember they have other options. Perhaps most importantly, if there's no XP, there isn't much incentive (in terms of the lazy, path-of-least-resistance psychology) for players to engage in battles. I could gate things so that they have to battle to progress, and in fact some battles I already expect to do that with, but it would be nice if the general solution were something more elegant, even something that makes "to fight or not to fight" an engaging gameplay choice.

Another thing to consider about this game specifically is that I'm trying to employ a mix of traditional "epic" JRPG progression with more short-term "Rogue-like" gameplay. The main story of the game will involve pre-designed dungeons (or quests as I'm calling them in-game) that are required for plot progression, but there will also be optional, procedurally-generated challenges separate from the plot. In these optional quests, I plan to temporarily set the heroes' "levels" (whatever that ends up meaning) to something appropriate for the challenge, then switch them back to whatever their progress was in story mode once they go back to that. All this is to say it would be great for there to be significant short-term progress within the optional challenges. The easiest way I can think of to accomplish this would be to make equipment a significant booster to the heroes' capabilities and generally start challenges with relatively low-level equipment.

To summarize, here are the "pros" of traditional XP for my game as I see it, which are things I would ideally hope to capture with any alternative system:

* Sense of progress
* Controlled learning curve for the player
* Motivation to engage in battle

And here are the "cons" of traditional XP, which I would hope to avoid in switching to an alternative system:

* Difficulty of balancing (can't be sure what level heroes are at during a given point)
* Motivation to grind (yes, I realize that's almost the same as motivation to engage in battle)
* Does not provide significant growth in short-term quests (or if it does, gives run-away growth in long-term campaign)

Thoughts, suggestions, things to add to the pros/cons lists?